Addresses:

Career

Assistant professor, Harvard University, 1980; associate professor,
Harvard University, 1982; full professor, Harvard University, 1983;
director of the Harvard Institute for International Development,
1995–99; director of the Center for International Development,
Harvard, 1999–2002; director of Columbia University's
Earth Institute as well as professor of sustainable development and of
health policy and management, Columbia University, 2002—.

Member:

American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Harvard Society of Fellows;
Fellows of the World Econometric Society; Brookings Panel of Economists;
Board of Advisors of the Chinese Economists Society; Institute of
Medicine; International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission,
1999–2000; chairman of the World Health Organization's
Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, 2000–01.

Sidelights

A lot of people talk about how to solve the world's problems, but
global economic consultant Jeffrey Sachs actually tries to do something
about it. Over the past two decades, his insight and intelligence have
helped many nations in their struggles for stability, leading the
New York Times Magazine
to call Sachs "probably the most important economist in the
world." Sachs is regularly consulted by world leaders such as
United Nations General Kofi Annan. He has also worked with Pope John
Paul II and served as an economic advisor to former Russian President
Boris Yeltsin. Sachs has traveled to more than 100 countries and, to
keep up with the demand for his advice, does daily video conferences. In
2004,
Time
magazine named Sachs one of the 100 most influential people in the
world.

Sachs was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954. His father, Theodore
Sachs, was an attorney whose life's work centered on improving
the working conditions for the labor force, such teachers, firefighters,
and other public–sector workers. Sachs said his father always
encouraged him to be involved in the issues of the day. Charming and
popular, Sachs was Oak Park High School student council president.
However, unlike most teens, he was passionate and active about politics.
Sachs marched on Moratorium
Day, a day university students around the nation spent protesting the
Vietnam War and calling for its end. Sachs also attended rallies that
featured the legendary United Farm Worker leader Cesar Chavez.

When Sachs was a sophomore in high school, his family took a trip to
Russia. There, Sachs befriended an East German student and the two
became dedicated pen pals. They developed a strong connection and Sachs
flew to Europe to visit his friend after he graduated from high school.
During this trip, Sachs became fascinated with the concept of world
economies. He began to think about how and why they were different and
wondered which economic models were best.

Sachs called the visit with his pen pal a defining moment in his life.
Speaking to John H. Richardson of
Esquire,
Sachs recalled the event: "He was telling me about the wonders
of socialism and the thing I discovered was I knew nothing about these
issues. I didn't know exactly what capitalism meant, what
socialism meant, why we had unemployment and they didn't have
unemployment. I didn't know how to answer any of that." By
the time Sachs arrived at Harvard College that fall, he said his head
was "swimming with this question of why different places in the
world have different economic systems."

Sachs was an ambitious student. He entered Harvard in 1972. In four
years, he completed his bachelor's degree and had begun his
doctorate. By 1980, he was a Harvard professor, dashing off dozens of
articles on economic principles—but the ideas Sachs discussed
were theoretical and the problems he tackled were solved with fancy
equations. In addition, Sachs tended to concentrate on the problems of
the developed nations, such as finding a way to solve the 1973 United
States energy crisis.

One day, however, a former student invited Sachs to attend a seminar on
Bolivia aimed at discussing possible solutions to its 60,000 percent
"hyperinflation." After speaking out at the seminar, Sachs
was invited to go to Bolivia, forever altering the course of his life.
As Sachs told
Esquire
's Richardson, "That's what really fundamentally
changed my life, my understanding of things, the day I stepped off the
airplane in La Paz—July 9, 1985. And I found that the world was
vastly more interesting and more complicated than my equations."

Sachs helped the government tighten its budget gap so that it would not
have to print so much money to pay its debts, which in turn caused more
inflation. Sachs also begged overseas lenders to forgive a portion of
Bolivia's debt. "Countries cannot be squeezed to the bone
to repay debts without provoking political and social upheaval,"
Sachs told
Esquire
's Richardson. He knew that the payments would plunge Bolivia
back into financial collapse. Naturally, the idea did not go over well
with the foreign lenders or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Eventually, Sachs secured a debt reduction for Bolivia, which helped
usher in the IMF debt–relief movement. Over the years, this
program has helped countless nations.

Sachs was incredibly successful in Bolivia. His reforms drove inflation
from 60,000 percent a year down to 12 percent. After this success,
Poland's leaders called upon Sachs in 1989 as they worked to
implement capitalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism. A
few years later, Russia asked for Sachs' help, too, as have many
other countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Sachs spent more than 20 years at Harvard and directed its Center for
International Development. In 2002, he headed to Columbia University to
run the Earth Institute, a conglomerate of 800–plus university
employees in dozens of departments in the health and science fields. The
Earth Institute works to help poor countries build sustainable
economies, while improving human health and preserving the natural
environment. "I'm focusing on a world divided between rich
and poor, and a world that doesn't seem to be able to manage the
natural base of our lives: air, oceans, or biodiversity," he told
Alec Appelbaum of
Fast Company.

While many economists predict gloom and doom in the fight to end poverty
in developing nations, Sachs truly believes it is possible. According to
Sachs, eradicating malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis will be the key
because if people are sick, they cannot work for their economies. Sachs
calls these three the diseases of poverty and believes they are a cause
as well as a consequence of it. Sachs believes that stopping these
diseases will unleash the economic potential of some of the poorest
countries. To this end, Sachs helped the United Nations start a global
fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. A study by Sachs and the
World Health Organization concluded that if the world's richest
countries raised $38 billion by 2015, they could save eight million
lives per year—and expand one–third of the world's
prospects for prosperity.

Sachs is irked that a lot of nations do not seem to get it.
"I'm still fighting against the incredible capacity of the
so–called international community to stare intense human disaster
in the face and not flinch from ignoring it," he told Faith
McLellan of the
Lancet.

Despite his jet–setting, jet–lagged lifestyle, Sachs could
not be happier. As he told Amy Barrett of the
New York Times Magazine:
"To have advised the pope, to be engaged with Kofi
Annan—I think our world's greatest political
leader—it's a joy beyond anything I could have hoped
for."